Kyle Bachus:
What's important is to know that there's a way to get answers and some accountability for what happened. And the money is not necessarily the measure of that. Although in our civil justice system, maybe it by definition becomes that in the end, at the beginning, what people are looking for is, what do I do next? How do I take some level of control over the uncontrollable?
Chris Dreyer:
Genuine empathy and a holistic approach to a client's needs during the most difficult times in their lives, help set winning firms apart.
Kyle Bachus:
When something like this happens, suddenly you have no control. This is an an uncontrolled outcome and it can't be fixed in the traditional way. I can't go and fix it. And I think from a marketing perspective, it's important to make sure that the messaging is. We can help get answers for you. But nobody wants to convert it into a dollar figure on day one. When they're looking for a lawyer, what they're looking for is answers to the questions that they're facing.
Chris Dreyer:
You're listening to Personal Injury Mastermind, where we give you the tools you need to take your personal injury practice to the next level. Since 1997, Kyle Bacchus and Darren Shanker, founding partners of Denver-based Bacchus and Shanker have grown to over 27 lawyers over a hundred employees. A firm that began with just $15,000, a shared passion, and a meeting at a local bar now boasts a massive marketing budget and status as one of the largest advertisers in the state of Colorado. I met with Kyle to discuss a bootstrapping, a law firm, how to spend the best marketing dollars and the importance of a holistic representation. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with search engine optimization. Being at the top of your game begins with understanding the people around you. So let's get to know our guests. Here's Kyle Bacchus, founding partner at Bachus & Schanker.
Kyle Bachus:
Darren and I randomly met, we both were employed by a small personal injury practice in Denver, Colorado. He was from Colorado. I had moved from Florida to Colorado. I didn't know very many people. And he and I were paired up to do some personal injury trials within this small law firm. The owner of that law firm, wasn't really committed to spending money, to put trials on the right way. Darren. And I both, I think had a different perspective and, pushed the issue and we want a couple of trials together. And we just got the talking in a bar one night and said, Hey, maybe we should breakout and try something on our own. And that literally is, was the first piece of it.
Chris Dreyer:
Were they just not wanting to invest the right of money into a case where like the expert witnesses and do the prep work to really, take that case to trial or was it more they're wanting to settle, what were some of those characteristics?
Kyle Bachus:
Really, it was exactly what you said. It was the investment in the cases, this putting the money out there on the quality experts, on taking the depositions that need to be taken, to put ourselves in the best position to win at trial. And Darren and I are both very competitive people. And I think that we were motivated to win and to do what was necessary to win. And we got a lot of kind of pushback on the money that was being spent to develop the cases. And so we really, just thought that there was a better way to more comprehensively represent people, raise that, raise the level of representation. And that's what we set out to do.
Chris Dreyer:
A lot of times people talk about value exchange And what you're saying is, Hey, instead of trying to do a low investment, keep your costs down. It's Hey, let's invest more. And an extend the value of the case, you and get those bigger settlements. you both wanted to win. You're very competitive. So let's talk about that. What are the values that you and Darren share that really make you good partners for the firm?
Kyle Bachus:
What's amazing about Darren and I is that we've now been partnering. Since 1997. Yeah, 1997. When Darren and I started this practice, we knew each other about 22 months. And to think about how little we knew about each other, really, when we, other than our work ethic, when we invested in this partnership together and it's been an incredible ride because. We really have never had an argument of any large nature. We've never raised our voices at one another. And we've built this thing from the two of us to having, 27 lawyers and more than a hundred employees. And that's a long track. And the way that it works with us is that we respect each other's opinions. We don't always agree with one another. But we really, it's been a terrific marriage and I'll tell you another interesting thing: Darren and I spend very little time in our personal lives together. It's and that's always just been the case. It's been a professional relationship and certainly. We do, we've gone to ball games and done stuff, but we primarily have different social circles and maintained separate lives. Despite the fact that we've been together as partners for so long. And I think that makes our relationship all the more special in a professional way.
Chris Dreyer:
It's just tremendous to see what you've accomplished. And I want to take it back to that $15,000 at bootstrap, that's growing a firm with $15,000, especially today, nowadays it's so saturated from a marketing perspective. How did you initially, put yourself out there to get those first cases, to start building revenue, to, to start the growth process?
Kyle Bachus:
So let me tell you a brief story about the $15,000. So Darren and I sat down and we were at a bar here in Denver, a little, a well-known bar called the Cherry Cricket. And we decided we were going to do this. And so we said how much money do you have in the bank? I said I don't really have any money in the bank. How much money did you have at the bank? And he was in the same position. We said let's both go back and see how much equity we have in our houses that we started our homes that we add each had. And we'll come back together in a few weeks and see what that looks like. And we got back together. Yeah, I looked at me and he said, yeah, I talked to the bank, went through it and they're willing to loan me $0 and 0 cents and a second, a mortgage home equity loan. And I said, I've got $12,400 in a home equity loan that they're willing to loan me. And we can cobble together a little bit more money. And so we signed an agreement that I wish that I still had, and it was written on paper. And it literally said that if we went out of business, that Darren was going to owe me $7,000. That is, and I wish I had it cause we'd hang it up on the wall. Now I have no idea what happened to that document, but we then got that home equity loan on. My first, the first house that I ever owned, and that is the money that we use to start the business. And as a result of that I went out first and I was, the agreement was that I would be paid $500 a month for the first six months in terms of getting the business off the ground. And Hit the streets going to every personal injury law firm that I can think of, especially the older attorneys and went into their offices and said, look, just, will you just give me the stuff that you're rejecting? I don't want anything that you want to take. Just send the stuff that you are rejecting. And let me take a look at it and see if if we can make some money off of. An interesting thing that very first case that was ever referred to our law firm went all the way to trial and lost in about an hour or less. I think the jury was out less than an hour. So the history of our law firm is our very first client. We couldn't get the case settled when all the way to court, we lost the trial jury trial and about an hour, probably lost about $6,000 on that case a year and a half into our practice.
Chris Dreyer:
I love what you did with the going to the other firms and saying, Give me the ones that you don't want. I think there's so much money left on the table. It's relationships. It's that grassroots, shake their hand, integrity thing. so you lost the first case, so that was like, boom, another big step back crying. What what was it that, when did the momentum shift, w where was it that where it's. Going on the upside?
Kyle Bachus:
We were very principled from the very beginning of this and we knew we had a short leash and we took out at the time, there was a in the Saturday newspaper, that would be a TV guide. And in that TV guide, we took out a little business card size ad that literally said, Car accident, free advice and gave our telephone number, thinking that people who are injured, you didn't have your TV channels on your remote at the time that if you were home from work because you were injured that you would probably would be looking through the TV guide and that really believe it or not, it worked, it gave us some business, but we set a principle rule with one another that we called the rule of five. Once we started going and the rule of five was. I don't care where you find it. I don't know how you get it, but each month each of us need to bring in five new cases. And so we challenged each other competitively to go out, whether that was hanging out in the bar, hanging out at church, whatever. Whatever it took. Like I told you, go into law offices and feeding off of this little ad that we had put in the TV guide to commit to each other, that at the end of each month, we were going to be accountable for trying to bring in five new cases a month into the law firm. And when you set goals like that and you are committed to it and you're competitive, you may not get there every month but there's a winner and there's a loser in that competition each month, in terms of the business side of it. I'm not talking about the client side, but there's a winner and a loser between Darren and myself as to who could accomplish it. And that really is the methodology that we use to start getting our business off the ground. And we went from a little ad in the TV guide to raising settling a few cases And doubling down that money into the yellow pages, with a small ad in the yellow pages all the way up to, at the height of the yellow pages, I think we were spending about $600,000 a year on yellow page advertising with a double truck ads. For those of you who are old enough to even know what that is, And then the internet came around and we also were very early on the internet.
Chris Dreyer:
In the past TV guide and yellow page ads work because they had our attention. There was very limited alternatives. Over the years, tactics and strategies have changed . I wanted to know what tactics Kyle sees as critical for law firm growth today.
Kyle Bachus:
Well, I think it depends upon what kind of law firm you want to be. Some say keep it small and keep it all right. Keep all the money. Others have a growth mind. We have operated on a growth mindset from day one to the present time. And so I think we're dealing with a very fractured marketplace in terms of advertising. We have made an, a long-term and repeated commitment to taking a certain amount of a percentage of our gross revenue and projected gross revenue and investing it on an annual basis. And we've stuck to that. And we've grown. We're now one of the not, I'm not talking about just lawyers, but one of the 10 biggest local advertisers in the state of Colorado. Period all industries local. Now there's national advertisers, of course, but so we're on, buses, billboards, TV, radio. We do the full gamut of advertising to me the most interesting thing that when I look to the future the further convergence of the internet and TV and we are investing in the kind of the streaming platforms. I will tell you, if a personal injury lawyer comes into our market and puts up a few billboards, from a more, from a competitive perspective That's not going anywhere in my, from my perspective, I don't think that's going anywhere. I think a billboards are an add on to a brand. If you've gotten to a point where you can establish a brand. So I think if I were not going to be trying to establish a brand, but instead just trying to get business without branding I would be much more engaged in just the internet as a platform and I know it's very expensive. I know the PPC side of things is extremely expensive and I know SEO is competitive to be on page one. So I get that, but I think I would be looking towards how to best monetize my ROI through an internet platform that I would going out and doing branding is very expensive. It's a big long term time commitment. It certainly can be accomplished. I think that even when we started branding here in Colorado, the marketplace was not as crowded as it is now. And so I think that the amount of money that it takes to get in and brand, when we first went on TV, we were an internet law firm after the yellow pages, internet, when Google bought YouTube. I in my mind that was like, I gotta be on both. I gotta be on both places. I don't know what the future of TV looks like. And I don't want to hedge wrong on that. And so when we first went on TV in 2007, so 14 years ago now we sat down and talked to various marketing companies and those that were truthful to us at the time told us, look, if you don't have a million dollars that you're willing to invest in this and lose meaning you're not going to see that million dollars you may see a different million dollars, but that million dollars is going to go away before you ever see any real return on it. If you're not willing to invest that kind of money into the market. And this is again, 2007, don't do it. And you're your. And we knew it, that sort of sacrifice looked like, and we committed to doing it. I can't imagine what that, what I truthful marketing company might tell somebody coming into a reasonably sized DMA at this juncture in terms of what it would take that to brand your name against the competition that's already there. So that's a long answer. I know, but I think that if I were looking to brand, I'd make sure that I'm commited so what it's going to take to brand and the longterm, and if I'm not committed to branding, I would be more stealth-like and more focused on on strikes in ROI on internet or local market niches, right? Local community niches, where you don't have to take over a whole market, but you're going to be, the main guy in an X market. And I think that there's a lot of avenues for local. By a zip code advertising that didn't exist because of the technology that's available now.
Chris Dreyer:
So let's just assume you have these kinds of binary choices to make this branding or this kind of direct response where you're really looking at ROI pers for your advertising investment. When you're the first question I have is when you're looking at a brand, how do you evaluate the success? Are you looking at just top impressions? Like, how do you evaluate if it's working? Is it focus groups? What does that look to even know if your branding strategies work.
Kyle Bachus:
Great question. And the bigger your brand becomes, the more difficult it becomes to assess. And I don't think that's just in our business. I think McDonald's probably has a difficult time going whether if they took away five billboards in a market, are their sales going to drop until they would try to do so when I look at at branding overall, First and foremost, when you start it, you can't judge yourself in the first year or two years probably those are in investment years that, if you, if again, if I see people come on TV and they run a campaign for a few months and they're not, and they're trying to judge their ROI on that few months. It's a dead loser. I can tell you it's a hundred percent of the time it's going to be a dead loser. Now you can do some mass tort marketing, direct response on a cable, but I'm talking about creating a brand and a marketplace. So I think what you have to look at over the long haul is Responsible volume, meaning calls, form submissions, chats, and case count on a quarterly basis, quarter over quarter, year over year. And is it growing or isn't it growing with your continued investment in the marketplace over the long haul? My that's what I do. And I think that's the way to gauge whether your marketing and your branding is working on the micro. It becomes very difficult and I think we're in a place now. Where we almost have to, from a branding perspective, we almost have to buy the case twice, which becomes extremely expensive. One. We have to be branded in the marketplace so that we have an awareness for people, not on a call to action basis, but just our top of name recognition. And then when somebody has a direct need. And then where they go to the internet and when they go to the internet, what do they see? Oh, they see those guys and they feel like there's a familiarity with us because of the brand. And so then most likely we're having to pay also to be present on the internet. And so in that sense from a branding perspective, we almost pay for the case twice. I think we get a higher ROI on that internet because of the brand that we're creating, but you can't rely upon self-reporting and you can't even re rely upon analytics because it's just becomes too diverse. So I think you have to look and say what using the best of your capabilities. If I add a piece to the market, Does my case count go up and does it go up more than I think it would go up with out it? And we've done some interesting things where we've said luck. Some of the information that we have when we look at the the zip codes of people who contact us, right? We get their email addresses and we get their addresses and we can look at zip codes. And when you do an analysis of that, you can say, okay, where are these people calling us from? What if we did more or did less advertising directly to those people? It does. Is it a game changer? And I am not the guy who, I have people who, the companies who, try to keep track of these external analytics for me and present to me on data. And sometimes the data is favorable and sometimes it's not. So the bigger you get, the more branded you get, the harder it is to figure out what's working and what's not.
Chris Dreyer:
Attribution can be blended and murky, even when it comes to digital. Ultimately all of those branded signals work together to win a client. I wouldn't know how granular Kyle gets when evaluate impressions and leads.
Kyle Bachus:
I challenged the vendors that I use to get granular, to prove to me that on the allocation of my budget, that they should get more of it. And and I do not rely upon a single vendor for all avenues of my marketing, because I want there to be a competition amongst them. And so at the, as I enter the fourth quarter of any year, we try to do predictive modeling. As to what the probable income to a firm is going to be based upon realistic data, what's our case count, what's our average fee per case. And we do the math. And then I take the probable income. And I know what percentage of that I'm going to allocate towards marketing. And then I have a marketing budget and then I invite the various vendors from whether it's billboards, buses, TV, radio SEO, digital. You know what PPC all to present to me, their strategy for the the upcoming year. And I sit down and I listened to them and all of them tell me how all of my cases came from them. Of course, and I've been doing it for a long time. And so I, and I'm straightforward with. And I didn't do a wheel of fortune. You got your pot of money and I maybe it's the old real, unfortunately when I used to watch wheel of fortune, you could like, then you had your money and then you got to go spend it on buy stuff. You buy this trip or that maybe they don't do that anymore and wheel of fortune. But, and so I look at it like that, then I've got to make the best decisions that I can make based upon the data that's presented to me. And so I asked them to get as granular as they can to show me why they're the source of my cases and I challenged them on it and then I make it. And then I make informed decisions and add, see if our case counts go up. .
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's smart. And the more data you get, the better decisions you can make. And when you have, a lot more billboards or a higher Google ad spend, you can get economies of scale, better data to make those decisions. The other thing that I liked, what you said was you used multiple vendors. So I've always looked at it like this individuals have a core competency and then they have context. And if you could find. The agencies that have our core in one thing. And that's their thing. I know it's a little bit harder from an effort and sacrifice standpoint where you got to talk to multiple people, but you're actually getting the specialists in their craft as opposed to just a context, like a little add on service that maybe they aren't the best in the world at.
Kyle Bachus:
So I think that's super smart. I'm very straightforward with vendors because they want all of my business for everything and they, and I tell them upfront, look, I want you all in on PPC. And I know you do other stuff and I need you to work with the other vendors. As well. And I know they may be competitors in your own space with you, but that's the relationship that I'm looking for is how can I just tell I'm not going to put all of my all my eggs in one basket. And I think that it has paid dividends over the years. It is more complicated. It'd be much easier just to have one full service company and say, okay, you guys do it all. And. But I think that the fragmentation of those duties pays dividends.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's talk about your book. You recently wrote a book, Unthinkable: Real Answers for Families Confronting Catastrophic Injury or Death, and it has significant meaning to you, can you share with us, what life events inspired the book?
Kyle Bachus:
I sure can. As a personal injury lawyer and. The listeners on this podcast know when you're a personal injury lawyer, you help families catastrophic the injured and death and maybe. Some lawyers are drawn to it because of a life experience. I wasn't, I just liked the David versus Goliath mentality of it. And but in the back of my mind, and I probably believe in the back of most personal injury lawyers, mind you, you have this I hope I never get that knock on the door. I hope it never happens to me. And what happened in my family is that I was doing this for more than 25 years. In April 2020. So April the 28th of 2020, my own mother was on a COVID walk. She had, this is right at the beginning of COVID. She had been told, don't don't go hang out with your grandkids. But she was in Florida where she lived and she was killed while walking across the street and across walk and was hit by a concrete mixer truck , at about five 30 in the evening in winter park, Florida. And we got that knock on the door and that call that everybody dreads to get. And of course, an event like that changes your life forever. W how that led to this book is as I was going through the grieving process and working through my loss, one of the things that really, and especially in dealing with my family, they had so many questions that they were asking me. And these were questions, not about not about a wrongful death case. But about about all of the other things attended to what happens to a family that you have to deal with in the face of something like this from, Hey, the police want to talk to us to what's so are they going to charge this guy? Is this guy going to go to jail? This guy was driving. How long has he got? I hope he's going to spend 10 years in jail. The questions that come up in within the family dynamic. And what I realized is that. I think I have done a very good job of representing families over the course of more than a quarter of century on these issues. But I suddenly saw an entirely different side of it, a much more holistic loss that was occurring. And I felt like. Who was in a better position than a lawyer. Who's done this for whether a quarter of a century. Who's now experienced this and the most graphic, terrible way that you could possibly experience it with your own mom. And. Who is it better to try to help families and even other lawyers understand the totality of the issues that are that a family faces and the questions that they have and these families. And I know it because I was, there are not sleeping. They're up in the middle of the night. They're grasping for answers and you know what happens. They start looking on the internet for answers, simple things. Should I talk to the police? What happens with the body? Do I need an autopsy? You know what do I do? What do I do at the car? What do I do at the pets? You start looking at this and what pops up is a bunch of lawyer ads that basically say almost to victims, congratulations, somebody was killed. You may have won the lottery, call me and let me get you a bunch of money. And I understand that because when I went back and looked at my own advertising in that marketplace, So I'm the vendors who are competing with the other vendors that we talked about. That's what but there's a lot of other questions that I think are on the forefront of people's minds. Certainly the civil justice system is one that they need to be worried about and it's important. And it's an important part of this book, but the book is really trying to address in chronological order. All of the questions that come up when somebody has been killed or catastrophically injured as a result of somebody else's negligence and what you can expect from the different components issues that you're confronted with.
Chris Dreyer:
No one is immune from the unexpected and tragic loss of a loved one. In Kyle's story. We can see ourselves, our shared humanity. I wanted to know how reading this book can spark true empathy and help personal injury lawyers become better attorneys.
Kyle Bachus:
What's important is to know that there's a way to get answers and some accountability for what happened. And the money is not necessarily the measure of that. Although in our civil justice system, maybe it by definition becomes that in the end, at the beginning, what people are looking for is, what do I do next? How do I take some level of control over the uncontrollable? And that's how people feel is, all of us. I think many people like to have some sense of that they're in control of their day to day life. When something like this happens, suddenly you have no control. This is an an uncontrolled outcome and it can't be fixed in the traditional way. I can't go and fix it. And I think from a marketing perspective, it's important to make sure that the messaging is. We can help get answers for you. It's not about how much money you may be entitled to that's I can tell you, that's not what people care about. They may care about how they're going to feed their family. That's different than but nobody wants to convert it into a dollar figure on day one. When they're looking for a lawyer, what they're looking for is answers to the questions that they're facing. And they're trying to just get through one hour at a time, then one day at a time, then one week at a time. And so I think that's important. And I think that bifurcating ourselves away from addressing the criminal justice system is a mistake. And what I mean by that is not that we, when we're representing people in civil cases, not that we have any. Final impact on what charges are broader or what happens, but making sure that the family, that you're part of that journey with the family is extremely important because it actually it actually elevates the importance of the civil justice system, because what happens in the criminal justice system is that, as we know as lawyers that's a system set up by the government to punish people for breaking society's rules. And a lot of our clients don't even understand that. And if we say, look, I'm here to help you on the civil case, but the criminal case is being handled by the government and you don't play any further role. I think you're doing a disservice because. They need your help and how do they need your help? Something as simple as entering an appearance in the criminal case, to make sure that notice is being given to the family of the events unknown to a lot of lawyers and really started by Ronald Reagan, after he was shot, there was this big movement to create the constitutional state rights for victims of crime. And in almost every state that we've looked at Serious bodily injury resulting in death caused by careless driving qualifies people as crime victims under these constitutional rights statutes. And that means that although your your clients may not have. They may not have a right to control the criminal justice system. They have a right to be respected in it, to participate in it, to be informed in it, to be supported in it. And that's why most police departments have victims, advocates. The people who are probably the next that talk to you after the police are victim's advocates. And those victims have victims. Advocates are their job exists because of this constitutional obligation. And so availing yourself and your client to all of this. Then teaching your client that the criminal justice system is based upon. And the book goes into this and for the clients and for the lawyers, the criminal justice system is based primarily on intentional conduct. If you run over somebody intentionally, you're going to jail for a long time, negligence and carelessness. Is treated on a very low end of the criminal justice system, as we know as lawyers, but clients don't know or understand that. And so getting the clients through to understand that this, that the criminal justice system, even in your best day, if there's not a DUI or some sort of habitual traffic conduct, A small, fine. You might get a loss of a driver's license for a year, even though somebody has been killed and having, and that feels so unfair to these clients. And if you're not engaged in that conversation they're feeling revictimized as opposed to empowered. And the empowerment is I'm going to take you through this system and we're going to, we're going to make sure that you have that your rights are. And that you have the victim's advocate at your side, and we're going to help you through that, but you're going to see this system and what it can provide for you and what it can provide for you. But we have this civil justice system that you are in control up, and you do get to make the decisions regarding, and we're going to walk you down that path. And I think that's, so I think that's really important.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that in it, and I've been working with personal injury attorneys for 10 years. I don't think I've heard it described in that manner.
Kyle Bachus:
I wouldn't have described it in that manner if I hadn't lived it. Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
That's really powerful. And I can see just the know you talked about like changing your external messaging, but internally you share the book with your other attorneys in your staff, then they're going to treat your clients differently and in a fuller manner, because. It kind of details that, that experience that you went through and I think that's taught, isn't talked about enough to everyone talks about leads leads, and then they talk about sales from an intake perspective, but they don't talk about that after that, after their client experience, they go through till the very end. And I think that's where there's a lot of stress and uncertainty. And first of all, I really applaud you doing that. Terrible circumstance. That's exactly how I would want to be treated.
Kyle Bachus:
And I'll tell you from, even from a marketing perspective the next part of the book deals with, the aftermath, right? And a lot of that is, is probate related, is there a will isn't there a will who gets what who's entitled to bring a case? And I will tell you using. This concept is holistic representation and involving my friends who are probate lawyers, who are very well-known probate lawyers in answering simple questions for people what you, what they find is I can make a referral to somebody and say, let's, I can talk to you about the intestate succession statute, and I can talk to you about whether there's a will and who gets what, but if there are or issues that may need. The person who guys owns real estate, that real estate can't be transferred outside of a probate court. That's the law, you can't transfer real property outside of, unless there's joint tenancy or other, some other exceptions. But that means I get to make a referral to a probate lawyer to assist who may or may not make money off of that piece of it. But usually when they're dealing with the family, this opens the eyes of the entire family to do I have a will do I have an advanced directive? Do I have these things? And it leads to relationship with probate lawyers who then I tell you when they get somebody who walks in their office, who has suffered this and that's it, who are they going to refer them to? They're going to refer them to me. You know why? Because they know I'm going to deal with this holistically. And they know that I know what I'm talking about and that I'm involved to help them. From beginning. And although my piece of it is the civil justice system, making sure that we're talking about all of the other aspects of it. So I think that it's conducive to practice growth, to understand the holistic needs of the clients are walking in with this type of injury. I think you do a disservice to the client and to your practice. If you're treating the people who come in with catastrophic injury or death cases in the same way that you're treating somebody who even somebody who needs a back surgery, that's an entirely different problem.
Chris Dreyer:
The best way to, to build a relationships is a referral is the best way to build a road. If you're just hanging out and your friends, like that's one thing, but it's, it builds in that actual reciprocity and Goodwill. I've got one, one final question here, What's next for Bachus and Schanker?.
Kyle Bachus:
One of the things that we've done internally, and we have, I think maybe the privilege of doing is we've bifurcated parts of our practice, where we have lawyers who now are only handling these catastrophic injury and death cases and only handling complex, really remanded mass tort cases. We looked at our whole law firm and said, we've got some very skilled lawyers who may be some of their talents are being, under utilized because of the broad spectrum of cases that they were handling. And so we designed what we call at our firm We call it the elite litigation group within our firm. And we. Divested those lawyers from working on any cases that don't meet the criteria, that would be what would warrant consideration of that, of the things in the book frankly. And and that really came out of the death of my mother and realizing the, just the concierge level of service that we want to provide to a certain segment. And looking forward to. Continuing to grow that aspect of our law firm and continuing to compete and invest . And we're also are opening neighborhood offices. That's the, we got out of we've finished. 10 year leases in big downtown locations. And instead we're going out and doing kind of the bank model and opening some community law offices for me, real estate groups and leasing the office space back to the law firm for through the real estate LLCs as a method to hopefully get to the end of the next 10 years and not look back and say what we just spent $10 million in rent and what do we have to show for it? So those are the, those are the things that we're doing.
Chris Dreyer:
Kyle encourages from owners to engage in open conversation with employees about what draws them to practice. Many of us are drawn to this work because of personal experience and tragedy draw on personal experience to connect with your. Begin your marketing campaign from a place of empathy, help your clients feel empowered as they go through the legal system. I'd like to think Kyle Bachus from Bachus & Schanker for sharing a story with us. And I hope you gain some valuable insights from the conversation you've been listening to personal injury mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer. If you liked this episode, leave us a review. We'd love to hear from our listeners. I'll catch you on next. Week's PIM with another incredible guest and all the strategies you need to master personal injury.
